While I disagree with your interpretation of Nietzsche's ranking among human types (e.g. the status he assigns Caesar), I think you are correct in your deflationary interpretation of the "sovereign individual". One could argue that his defining characteristics are necessary in order to qualify as a Nietzschean "higher man", but they remain woefully insufficient.

I heard your lecture on i-tunes, and really enjoyed it. I'm taking a course on Contemporary Philosophy and we are reading Twilight of the Idols. I was not sure how to interpret Maxims 18,21, and 34.

Maxim 18 says: whoever does not know how to lay his will into things, at least lays some meaning into them: that means, he has the faith that they already obey a will.

Is Nietzsche saying that those who are not capable of forging their own path to life, ascribe a meaning to life--that is, meaning derived from religion--"God's will"?

Maxim 21 says: To venture into all sorts of situations in which one may not have any sham virtues, where, like the tightrope walker on his rope, one either stands or falls--or gets away.

Is Nietzsche saying that when one ventures into situations where one must make hard moral choices, one's moral beliefs are put to the test, and may lead them to get away from notions of absolute morality?

Maxim 34 says: On ne peut penser et ecrire qu'assis. There I have caught you, nihilist! The sedentary life is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value.

Is this a critique by Nietzsche on nihilism (and the sedentary lifestyle, which could be viewed as a derivative of nihilism)?

On MAXIM 18: Nietzsche means that the higher individual, the "free spirit", who does not know how to lay "his will", because he is not yet conscious of what power he can use in himself to derive values by which he can thrive and survive, must first become a kind of prostitute for a time, perhaps an object for the pimp world, and essentially murder his own personal will (his perspective), which can be thought of as a kind of death by suicide, before he can become a subject himself, and therefore "his will" will naturally be in every "thing", because he changed the "thing[s]", and now every thing possesses his will naturally. It's safe to say that Nietzsche equated bare survival with being powerless, as not every organism exists in the context of barely surviving. When something survives, that means power ("new" power) was created.

On MAXIM 21: We can interpret this maxim as a statement on nature and on the speculative nature of human life, with its exceptional and unique capacity to exist and be (to "survive") in a state of uncertainty and seeming ambiguity and obscurity, where "sham virtues" are not only perhaps impossible, but also wholly and inevitably undesirable as a natural means to an end, by which an organism ("nature") can derive some power because it "must" subsist and depend on this power. The inexorable urgency and necessity of the "tightrope walker" to either "stand" or "get away" impels a very certain reality that manifests itself as truth, because it is "needed" to survive, for the "tightrope walker" to avoid falling to his death. The seeming anarchy of nature may be justified and even perhaps realized only in the human mind, so that we cannot demand from ourselves what we're unwilling to demand from nature, by some kind of subtraction, taking "more" of "less" by taking "less" of "more."

I took Maxim 18 to mean that when one is powerless to assert oneself in life (or some situation), then to regain some sense of control one attributes a meaning to life that it represents the will of another being (e.g. God). Such belief is the principle of faith.

On MAXIM 21: We can interpret this as a statement on nature and on the speculative nature of human life, with its exceptional and unique capacity to exist and be (to "survive") in a severe state of uncertainty and seeming ambiguity and obscurity, where "sham virtues" are not only perhaps impossible, but also wholly and inevitably undesirable as a natural means to an end, by which an organism ("nature") can derive some power because it "must" subsist and depend on this power. The inexorable urgency and necessity of the "tightrope walker" to either "stand" or "get away" impels a very certain reality to manifest itself as truth, because it is "needed" to survive, for the "tightrope walker" to avoid falling to his death. The seeming anarchy of nature may be justified and even perhaps realized only in the human mind, so that we cannot demand from ourselves what we cannot demand from nature, by some kind of subtraction, taking "more from less" by taking "less of more."

About Me

Brian Leiter is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for Law, Philosophy, & Human Values at the University of Chicago. He works on a variety of topics in moral, political, and legal philosophy. His current Nietzsche-related work concerns Nietzsche's theory of agency and its intersection with recent work in empirical psychology; Nietzsche's arguments for moral skepticism; and the role of naturalism in Nietzsche's philosophy.